On the Road Again 2015 - Prologue #3

A week today, I leave for my trip. I can only hope that by then I have gotten myself a lot better organized that I am right now. There are a lot of little thing that need to get done between now and when I leave including finding stuff I have not used for a year, sewing a waterproof bag for my camera, getting a haircut, doing laundry, cleaning out my fridge and making sure the apartment is reasonably clean. Of course I also need to pack for the hitchhiking part of my trip, have a box ready to mail to myself with other summer stuff that I need but don't want to carry, and make sure that I have enough clean clothes left to wear at my granddaughter's graduation next Friday.

I know that I will get it all done but right now it all feels rather out of control.  I have an almost overwhelming, sometimes paralyzing feeling of uneasiness about the trip. This feeling of apprehension before leaving is not an unusual one for me.  I always seem to have a small panic attack at some point before I leave. I start to feel apprehensive or at least conflicted about what I am about to do. I do not think that I am worried about the rides or about where I will sleep but there is this sense that it is a whole bunch of work and I am not too sure why I do it.   I am never too sure if I get cold feet  because I am lazy and there are so many easier ways of travelling, or if it is the fear of something bad happening.  I use to think that it was the fear of not being in control (hitchhiking is all about giving up control), but this year my life has been so relaxed and outside of any schedule that that reason no longer makes any sense to me. None-the-less, I find myself finding excuses to avoid doing any of the above tasks.

On the other hand I am really excited about going. Before I go to sleep and as I wake up I fantasize as the great rides that I will get and of the people that I will meet. I get excited just thinking about that high I know I will get as soon as the first car/truck stops for me. As I said I am conflicted over the trip.
I have started to pack, made a few new signs, bought stuff like sun tan lotion and a new tee shirt and started to make lists of things that I need to do and pack. I have started to gather together the bits and pieces I need to take with me to make my life easier. My dining room table is littered with those items as I sort through them trying to decided if I really need to carry something that I have never used (for example, while I use my water filter while camping, I have never used it while hitchhiking - so why do I always carry it?). Every year I seem to carry more and technology  including the tablet, the bluetooth mini keyboard, and all of the wires needed to keep those things as well as my camera and cell phone charged. At the same time I am very aware that I am not as strong as I use to be and therefore feel even less inclined to carry any more weight than I have to. I suspect that I will, as usual, pack and re-pack both the box I am mailing and my knapsack more than a few times in the upcoming days. And when I get the West Coast, I will find that there are things that I either didn't need but carried anyways or even worse things that I have left at home that I should have brought.

I think I just realized that part of my obsessions with packing is related to needing to be in control and making sure I have what I need is the last bit of control that I will be able to exercise for the next two months. Something to think about.

The Senate

For the past year or so, the Canadian public have been exposed to the seemingly endless saga of what is wrong with the Canadian Senate. From the over spending and the bending of rules by some senators (an understatement if there was ever one) to the blatant sense of entailment from the rest - it has been hard for any of us who care about how our country is governed to avoid a sense of despair. In addition, the fact that the upper chamber clearly operates along party lines makes the institution simply a rubber stamp for almost everything that is passed in the lower chamber. One could become depressed just thinking about it. It is understandable why so many Canadians, including Tomas Mulcair the leader of the NDP, feel that we should do away with the Senate in its entirety.

The institution however, will not be that easy to get rid of it. The Senate has two critical functions. Without the promise of having a two tiered parliamentary system, there would never have been a country called Canada. The fear of those from the Maritime provinces and later those from the west was that they would become irrelevant. The intent of the framers of the BNA was to ensure that the more populated regions from central Canada such as Ontario and Quebec would not dominate the smaller, less populated regions such as the Maritimes. The very fact that one of the senators is now on trial in part because his alleged place of residence was in fact not where he lived, reflects how far we have drifted from one of the reasons why we have a Senate.

Secondarily, it was intended that the Senate would be a place of "sober second thought"; a place where people would review the legislation passed in Parliament before it became the law. It was never the intent of people such as John A. Macdonald that the Senate would be operate on the party system with the Prime Minister having the sole responsibility of appointing new senators. No one could have imagined a world where senators voted according to the instructions of the person or party that placed them into the Senate. Sober second thought very clearly implies that the proposed legislation is reviewed without bias. Equally as clearly that function in our Senate has long since disappeared.

 Now more than ever we need to have both those protections reaffirmed and made active within our parliamentary system. Fortunately there is already a model in Canada of how a revised Senate could function. Adopting such a system would have the added benefit of paying tribute to, and recognizing the value of Aboriginal forms of government.

The Nunavut government operates under consensus-style government (Nunavat). No one runs for election under a party banner. The leader of the house is chosen by those from and by those who have been elected. Decisions while they are debated, are not voted on - they are agreed to by mutual agreement. While it is no doubt difficult to achieve consensus with 105 members ( the number of Senators), it is not impossible. There are lots of models as to how to do it and lots of folks who would be delighted to give instruction on how to listen and how to participate in consensus-style government.

There are however, two problems. How does one get the senators already appointed until they are 75, to resign and how do we appoint new senators? Looking for possible senators would be easy. There are thousands of bright, well educated and knowledgeable Canadians who would do a great job. Creating a process to pick them would be a challenge but I would guess a committee comprised of equal representation of political parties, regional representatives, universities, unions, the various faith communities and not-for-profit organizations would provide a good working list. Perhaps if we asked nicely, the Senators would resign. Either that or we just ignore them until they die off.

In looking briefly at the  Constitution Act of 1982 (Act) it would seem to me that making changes as to how senators are chosen and how it operates are well within the present legislation. As long as the composition of the upper chamber did not change in terms of regional representation, it would not need to be brought to the provinces for approval. 

I am sure there would be a few bumps along the road to re-formatting the Senate into what it was suppose to be 150 years ago. But we are about to celebrate our sesquicentennial. Maybe we should give ourselves a birthday present.

Bare Ankles

Ever since I did the bit about dress codes for young people at school I have been thinking off and on about women's clothing - or rather how society's standards are transformed, relatively quickly, in terms of what is appropriate to be seen and consequently what is sexually attractive. How those standards evolve is rather extraordinary. The logic as why anyone follows those same standards defeats me. I suspect that they are justified in terms of more freedom and more comfort. I wonder if that is always true.

I can remember the first time I saw a television commercial about bras. My parents, my sister and I were all sitting in our basement "family room" watching some program or another when the commercial came on. I don't think anyone said a word, but I can remember the distinct feeling of discomfort emanating from all of us in the room. In hindsight I think while it was embarrassing for me as a thirteen year old to see a bra on the screen, I am sure it was worse for my older sister. I think however, for my father it was probably more than just a bit embarrassing. I suspect that he more than any of us was not sure where he should or could look. He came from a pre-war culture where one just did not acknowledge such items of clothing. At least not in public.

There was a time when if a slip or bra strap was showing, it was a moment of embarrassment. It was not that one did not know that women wore such items of clothing, they had after all been visible for public consumption for decades in the Eaton's catalogues, it was that people didn't talk about them. Adjusting the strap so that it was back in the right place was a task of some delicacy. In 2015 not only are slip straps for the most part a non-issue because so few wear slips, but bras are now brightly coloured and made to be seen.

I thought of my father last week as I was biking home from the library. Ahead of me on the sidewalk was a young lady walking with I assume her boyfriend (they were holding hands). She was wearing black tights and a short t-shirt. To say that the tights hugged her skin to the point that one could easily tell not only what she was wearing underneath, but also see any marks on her thighs does not do justice to describing how skin tight that garment was. I suspect that if she had used a can of spray paint to cover herself , she would have revealed less. My father would not have had a clue as to where to look - but then one else on the sidewalk or in their cars did either. I can't imagine what my father would say about that young lady or the fact that Victoria Secrets has an annual runway show on mainstream television.

Low scoop t-shirts or blouses where much is shown or tight jeans that leave nothing to the imagination are just the current style. They are part of a fashion continuum that has, ever since the turn of the last century,  shown more and more female flesh. I think the question that someone could ask is - are women more sexually interesting than they were a hundred years. The answer is of course, no. Men in 1915 were just as interested in women as they are in 2015. In fact one has to wonder if life was just that little bit more interesting when seeing a revelled ankle was the highpoint of being with a young lady. There was so much to look forward to. Perhaps one can also wonder when that day comes when there are no more secrets to be viewed - what will be interesting then?

Ronnie Gilbert

Ronnie Gilbert died this past week. Her passing was not noted (or at least I didn't see it) by the Canadian main street media nor by anyone on my Facebook pages. And that is a shame. Perhaps the under thirty-five year olds, to which so much of our social media is directed towards, don't have a clue who she was. And that is incredibly sad.

But if you are an old folkie like me, long before there were trios or duos such as Peter, Paul and Mary, Ian and Sylvia or the Travellers- there were the Weavers. Three guys - Lee Hayes, Pete Seeger and Fred Hillerman and one woman - Ronnie Hayes. The Weavers in the late 1940s and early 1950s sang folk songs in the purest sense of the word. They sang songs from all over the world written by and sung by people who lived ordinary lives. Songs that told stories about their lives - their joys and their heartaches. Songs that talked about the struggles of the common people. Those songs are still sung around campfires. It is the music that is at the back of our heads as we travel long distances across this country.

The music was basic, the lyrics were simple but there was a joy and a vibrancy that rang through every song they ever sang. They were popular at universities and made it at least twice to Carnegie Hall. It has been argued that the folk music boom that blossomed at the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s may not have happened in quite the way that it did if the Weavers had not taught the world the songs of such unknowns as Lead Belly or Woodie Guthrie.

The members of the Weavers were, to say the least, on the left side of the political spectrum. Their comments as to the state of the capitalistic western world and the suggestion that we should be all working for world peace were enough for them to be banned from performing during the McCarthy era. They broke up, went their separate ways, rejoined back together and finally by the mid 1960s broke up. They did however occasionally preform with their last concert together being in 1980.

After the Weavers broke up for the first time Ronnie Gilbert earned an MA in clinical psychology and worked as a therapist. Later in life she did a one person musical show based on the life of the activist Mary Harris, sang in reunion concerts with Peter Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. She went on tour with Holly Near. Her voice, while very powerful, may not have been the most perfect voice ever to reform at Carnegie Hall. But she brought to the Weavers a balance to their music. She was an equal presence on the stage and in their music. She was clearly not just a backup singer or someone who was just along for the ride. Her humour and her love of song was present in every note she sang. And the weavers were so much better for her presence.